Blogs and Stories
Thugs Plague Women Entrepreneurs
For Amina*, an entrepreneur who owns a petrol distribution firm, it is too late for protection. Her small business grew steadily during the past few years, with revenue climbing after she opened a gas station convenience store. Criminals caught on to her success, however, and kidnapped her. Her family scrambled to gather the more than $100,000 in ransom money her abductors demanded, eventually winning her release, but she now owes friends and relatives tens of thousands of dollars. Profits Amina saved to grow her enterprise are gone—instead of financing investment, those dollars now fund her kidnappers. The fledgling entrepreneur’s dream of expanding her distribution operations to neighboring provinces is destroyed and her company has run out of working capital. It is likely her dozen employees will soon be jobless.
Like Habiba, Amina was eager to build her business and help rebuild her nation. These entrepreneurs, like many others in Afghanistan, relied upon their ventures to support their extended families and to fund their children’s education. Now, drained of cash and out of hope, they are eager to leave the country. But that might bring more danger, not less.
“Pakistan looks even more troubled than Afghanistan now,” says Habiba, considering her next steps over a cup of afternoon tea just after her two dozen kindergartners have left for the day. “I am not sure where we can go that is safe.”
* name changed for security purposes.
Get Involved: BPeace supports women entrepreneurs in post-conflict societies. MercyCorps trains war survivors on starting their own businesses. MEDA offers microfinance loans with a focus on agriculture. Peace Dividend Trust conducts research on the effectiveness of foreign aid and humanitarian investments in Afghanistan.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon covered presidential politics as a producer at ABC News in Washington. Since 2005, she has been reporting on women entrepreneurs starting small and midsize businesses in post-conflict economies such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Rwanda. She is working on a book scheduled for 2010 publication by HarperCollins about a young Afghan entrepreneur whose business supported her family and community during the Taliban years.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
For more of The Daily Beast, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
What's Joe's Problem?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Don't Abandon Us, Obama
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon covered presidential politics as a producer at ABC News in Washington. Since 2005, she has been reporting on women entrepreneurs starting small and medium-sized businesses in post-conflict economies such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Rwanda. She is currently working on a book scheduled for 2010 publication by HarperCollins about a young Afghan entrepreneur whose business supported her family and community during the Taliban years.
Watch out for Bpeace - big claims, small returns. Big egos. Shiny marketing. Impressive resumes. But ask the entrepreneurs what they think and you get a very different story. It's not always what it seems.
Between the inept and corrupt Kabul regime and the murderous plus societally retarded Taliban, Afghanistan really illustrates how in this world works for women. They are screwed no matter who is in charge, unless it's women themselves.
The NGO's that are helping these women to start and manage their businesses are a critical part of Afghanistan's future. We can only hope there will be enough security provided for them, and for these very brave women, to continue to rebuild the country.
Organizations like CARE International and BPEACE and so many other NGOs are putting an incredible amount of energy to help Afghan women have educational and economic opportunities, with full support from Afghans themselves. What a shame that corruption and greed continue to derail so many efforts.
I am a BPEACE volunteer and have been to Afghanistan to work with business women there. These woman are building businesses that are creating jobs and opportunity, not just for themselves but for the men and women they employ as well. Commitment to building Infrastructure and providing security have got to be priorities. These women deserve it for the efforts that they are putting in to rebuild their country.
The Afghan women have been a integral part of the over all rehabilitation effort. The world needs to know about this. Im a documentary film maker based in Karachi and would love to get intouch with someone here and discuss the possibilities of a documentary.
As if life in an impoverished war-ravaged country weren't difficult enough! Add the socio-cultural prejudice against women and it would seem a even more toxic brew. Yet these enterprising women have, despite these odds, manage to begin their dreams. One can only imagine the level of their individual and collective successes under more favorable circumstances! Improving the security infrastructure seems to be, according to on-ground reports, a lost battle. The callous greed of gender biased vigilantes impedes economic progress and civil rights for women. At this juncture, these conditions perpetuate the disenfranchisement of Afghan society as a whole.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.